In lattice surgery, quantum information is encoded by way of patches. After the chip produces a large RHG lattice, homodyne measurements in the \(q\)  quadrature disentangle certain nodes from the lattice, effectively creating holes.
We refer to these \(q\) -measured regions as gaps, and we define a patch as a continuous part of the lattice completely surrounded in the spatial dimensions by a gap The gap region is referred as the vacuum [1]}, but we forgo this terminology to avoid confusion with the more common notion of vacuum. Note also that the patches we consider here do not contain defects, that is, internal gaps..
Fig:patchdefinition shows an example of a patch and how two logical qubits are encoded with it. A patch can be deformed to move around the logical information and minimize overheads.
Patch deformations can be achieved by changing the \(q\)  homodyne measurements to \(p\)  in the gap surrounding the patch (without connecting it to other patches), followed by a sufficient number of rounds of error correction.
